You might have heard the English proverb, “Once a liar, always a liar.” It is a fact, but do you ever wonder about the psychological reasons for lying? We all lie sometimes consciously, while sometimes we do so unconsciously.
Anyway, no matter what the reason is, we all lie, and that is something no one can deny.
In today’s article, we will discuss what is lying. How often do people lie? and the psychological reasons for lying? So let’s start.
1. To hide one’s feelings
2. To get reward
3. To avoid punishment
4. The precursor of the previous lie
5. To justify one’s position
6. Psychopath
7. Due to intelligence
8. To make other people happy
9. To neglect reality
10. To impress others
What Is Lying?
“Lying is characterized by behavior when someone want to create false beliefs in others, even sometimes in themselves.”
— Anonymous
A lie is the opposite of truth, a universal phenomenon, or the actual happening of an incident. When someone is not telling the truth and describing something that has not happened, we will say he is lying. And the person who is lying is referred to as a liar.
History of lying
Lying is not a new concept; it is as old as we are. Lying is an essential factor in human behavior. When people started to communicate with one another, they started to support their wrongdoing with false beliefs.
However, the history of lying has its roots in ancient philosophy, literature, civilization, politics, art, and religions.
Types Of Lies
There are two types of lies: prosocial lies and antisocial lies. When a person wants to benefit others, these are called prosocial lies.
In this case, the liar doesn’t want to hurt anyone around him by spitting out facts. On the other hand, antisocial lies are totally for personal goals. These are self-centered.
“He who tells a lie is not sensible of how great a task he undertakes, for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.”
— Alexander Pope
How often do people lie?
A study was conducted by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to find out how often people lie. They found that almost sixty percent of people lie every ten minutes of conversation.
They also noted that lies told by women and men only differ in their intentions. Despite that, men don’t fabricate less than women, or vice versa.
Do you know?
Men lie six times a day to their family, friends, and relatives. Women lie three times a day to their boss, colleagues, and family.
Why do people lie?
There’s no shock in knowing that people took lies as a part of their lives. To find out why people involve themselves in deception, first, you have to know why people avoid telling the truth. It takes a lot of courage to speak the truth. Only a brave man can’t tell lies.
According to the APA, if we reduce the amount of lying in our everyday lives, it will have positive impacts on our lives. People experience less depression and anxiety in their lives while experiencing the truth.
10 Psychological Reasons For Lying
There are a lot of psychological reasons for lying in relationships and in personal and professional life.
1. To hide one’s feelings
Remember how many times you’ve told the truth when someone asks you, “How are you?” We are all exposed to this question so many times in a single day, and most of the time the answer is “Yeah, fine.”
Probably the reason behind this is that we don’t want to expose our feelings. People often lie because they don’t want to express their feelings to others. Almost all of us lie about our feelings. Act as if we don’t care, but in actuality, we do.
2. To get reward
According to the reward theory of psychology, when people get rewarded for the consequence of an action, their chances of repeating that action increase.
This is important for learning a certain type of behavior and developing habits. People lie when they think that they can be rewarded for that lie. To get hired by a company, some people lie on their resumes.
Students lie about their grades because they want a feeling of appreciation. On the other hand, some people lie because they want to get something from their loved ones.
The reward may be different for different people, but telling a lie is common among many of us.
3. To avoid punishment
In addition to reward theory, there’s another psychological concept called punishment theory. According to this, if people are punished after a certain action, there are fewer chances of repeating that action.
This can be used to get rid of bad or unwanted habits. But what does it have to do with lying?
According to research, people lie because of the fear of being punished. They tend to hide reality because they can be punished if they tell the truth. Telling a lie could be a source of escapism for the punishment.
Children often lie to avoid punishment from their elders. Students lie about being late for school, excusing too much traffic on the way.
4. The Precursor of the previous lie
“A liar’s worst enemy is someone with a good
memory.”
There’s a saying, “You’ve got to create a hundred other lies to hide a single one.” And that is the absolute truth because many times people get involved in falsehoods to cover up the lies they’ve told in the past.
In other words, many fabrications are the precursors of previous deceptions. So next time, be careful while telling a lie. You might get involved in a situation where you will have to cover up your previous lie by fabricating others.
Do you know?
You can easily spot a liar with some lie-detecting techniques. When someone is lying, their facial expression and body posture change.
5. To justify our position
One of the psychological reasons for lying is that we want to justify ourselves in a particular situation. We make lame excuses about our wrongdoings with other people to justify our wrongdoings.
People pose themselves as victims as if they have done nothing wrong. If they do, it might be the need of the hour.
6. Psychopaths
Psychopathy is a psychological disorder in which people are addicted to lying. They feel happy by doing this, and it is their habit to grab other people’s attention by telling them little lies.
Maybe their lies are tolerable and not harmful, but sometimes they become unbearable and can cause serious destruction.
They want to dominate their family and friends, so they fabricate. Their sense of satisfaction is associated with harming others through deception. They lack sympathy and empathy for others.
Sometimes they become pathological liars and fabricate constantly with the intent of making others suffer. Such people should consult psychologists for proper guidance.
7. Due to intelligence
Will you believe me if I tell you that intelligent people are more liars than others? Well, you have to believe this because you can’t debate with science.
There are numerous studies that prove that people with higher levels of intelligence are good at deception. People also tell lies because they have a higher level of emotional intelligence than others.
They have more active brain cells as compared to others, so they can generate false scenarios quickly. They possess an excellent ability to create fiction and imaginary stories.
All the famous writers, novelists, and storytellers have extraordinary abilities because they are awesome at fabricating false scenarios.
8. To make other people happy
Some people want to make other people happy; that’s why they lie. We are living in a society where we have to interact with a lot of people and maintain healthy relationships with all of them.
There will be so many things you don’t like, but you have to pretend that you don’t have any issues.
People lie because they care about other people’s emotions. They think that people will hate them if they tell them the truth.
For example, you can’t tell your neighbours that you don’t like their child. It will create anarchy between both of you.
9. To neglect reality
We are living a life of deception and are lying to ourselves. Life doesn’t always follow a straight line. It is a cycle of ups and downs, pleasures and sorrows. Hardships and suffering are part of human life.
But our nature is designed in such a way that we don’t want to face suffering and want to live a life of ease.
But in this situation, many of us tend to neglect reality. We tell ourselves and the people around us that everything is okay. We show ourselves as perfect human beings.
This is a coping mechanism for many people. They think that by hiding the facts, they can deal with stress and anxiety, but in actuality, they are increasing their hardships.
10. To impress others
Have you ever seen a person who always brags about his intelligence? Such types of people are everywhere around us.
They want to stand out in every situation by expressing their ideas and thoughts. Well, knowledge is power. There is nothing bad in it.
If you have information about a particular thing, then sharing it with others is nothing that you should be concerned about.
But these people don’t just do that. Since they are addicted to grabbing other’s attention, they often resort to lying to prove themselves superior.
They do not want people to know about their ignorance and lack of intelligence, so they tell lies.
Also read: 10 Psychological reasons behind why you can’t stop thinking about someone.
Conclusion
Hence, there are so many psychological reasons for lying. People lie for personal and social purposes.
We should discourage liars and appreciate those who speak the truth. In this way, actual moral values will grow in society.
But speaking the truth doesn’t mean that you should hurt others by spitting out bitter facts. In spite, we have to be kind and adopt a pattern of behavior that will be harmful to anyone.
